KATHMANDU: Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal dropped the idea of leading Nepali delegation to New York to address the 65th UN General Assembly after Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon refused to meet him.
Two sources at Nepal’s Permanent Mission to UN in New York and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) confirmed that the PM had sought a meeting with Ban on the sidelines. However, the Secretary General declined to meet him as he had done last year.
An official at the mission told this daily that Ban refused to meet ‘caretaker’ prime minister in the wake of war of words between Nepali government and UN Mission in Nepal over the latter’s role in monitoring Maoist combatants.
Another official at MoFA said, “We had made several attempts to fix PM’s meeting with Ban, but to no avail.”
PM’s Foreign Affairs Adviser Rajan Bhattarai claimed that the PM skipped the trip, as he wanted to engage himself in taking forward the peace process. He said it was a “normal diplomatic practice” to seek a meeting with Secretary-General while a head of government of its member-state planned to visit UN summit.
http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Ban+refused+to+meet+PM+&NewsID=259096
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